Rehabilitation Of Resentment

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

“You cannot offend, you can be offended”, “offense is a consequence of inadequate expectations”, “offense is manipulation”. Familiar cliches? Resentment has been unlucky lately. It is difficult to say why - but the offense was deleted from the list of "legal" human experiences and began to be viewed as a harmful, destructive, "racketeering" feeling, and a person offended - almost as an aggressor. For some reason, esotericists especially fell in love with this topic: articles with advice on how to get rid of resentment in yourself and never again allow this feeling into your beautiful inner world - there are no numbers on the portals of popular psychology with a bias in spiritual practices

To begin with, a small excursion into history. In equating resentment with manipulation, I believe, the popularizers of E. Bern, who described a number of games associated with manipulation of feelings of guilt, are "to blame". The phrase "you can't offend, you can be offended" belongs to Ernest Holmes, founder of the Science of Mind movement, who wrote the following in his book The Power of Thought: "Vulnerability is not a weakness, but a diagnosis. Not allowing anyone or anything to hurt your emotions means do not allow yourself to feel offended. Remember that it is impossible to offend; you can - to be offended. " The comrade gained many followers, including among NLP lovers, but he was not a psychologist, but a very radical religious philosopher. The concept, in which resentment is viewed as a distortion of perception, a marker of inadequate expectations, belongs to the Russian scientist Yu. M. Orlov, the author of the theory of sanogenic (healthy) thinking and a book about resentment - in my opinion, useful and exciting (you can read it here). In it, the author describes the mechanism of resentment as a reaction to the discrepancy between reality and expectations, but nowhere does he stigmatize resentment as a destructive feeling, and even emphasizes the harm from suppressing and deliberately hiding grievances, advocates the ecology of communication, encourages others to report their experiences.

How did it happen? How were the existing psychological concepts picked up, altered and incorporated into the idea of self-development through the elimination of supposedly "negative" feelings from the inner world? I am confused (and offended) by this trend. I cannot consider any feelings that have arisen in the process of human evolutionary and social development as harmful. Let's figure it out.

First of all, resentment is a feeling that arises as a result of socialization. A baby who cannot satisfy his need only experiences anger. For the appearance of resentment, the inner reality must become more complex: the value of a relationship with another person must appear in it. Resentment is a complex experience that includes both self-pity and anger at the offender, and, importantly, the holding of this anger by the opposite tendency - love or, at least, the idea of the value of relationships. Too controversial? Yes. The world of human experience can be complex, ambiguous, and implies that the human psyche is able to cope with ambivalence: that one can experience different feelings for one object. Simplification, coarsening of feelings is a marker of impaired mental development, and, conversely, the healthier a person is, the more subtle, complex and ambiguous experiences are available to him. What happens if you don't hold back your anger? A person will, if not immediately kill, then at least break off relations at the slightest discrepancy between the expected and the real.

How about immediately accepting the other as they are? It's a good idea, but too abstract. To accept you as you are, you first need to understand who you are. The idea that a person can know and accept something in advance is the idea of omnipotence. Living people know little in advance, do not hesitate to turn on the natural function of disgust, and, if they are not poisoned by the idea of "all-acceptance", they give themselves the opportunity to get to know another in the course of a relationship. Resentment arises from inadequate expectations, but the fact is that our expectations for each other can never be completely adequate, and our perceptions can never be completely free of projections. The perception of another person is inevitably based on a projection, which has yet to be tested in communication. And if we talk about close relationships, then the inevitable stage of falling in love, which allows people to stay close due to a strong attraction to each other, implies merging with their projections. The first offense in a relationship is the first step in moving from a blissful fusion to getting to know the other person, and through that recognition, to a more mature relationship.

Thus, resentment - this is an opportunity to pause and regulate interpersonal interaction, understanding their expectations and the reactions of the other. Yes, the reactions of another to my offense - including. What about the fact that resentment - causes some kind of reaction, which means it can be considered as manipulation? But any emotion has a communicative aspect. Expression of emotion in appearance and behavior is the oldest method of communication that allows both animals and people to regulate their communication with their relatives. In this sense, any emotional influence on another person can be viewed as manipulation. In communication, people inevitably observe each other, send emotional signals, read emotional responses - and thus build relationships and distance in relationships. As you know, less than 30% of information is transmitted by words. In my opinion, we should not talk about the destructiveness of the offense in itself, but about destructive or constructive communications that a person chooses when he turns out to be an offender or offended. If the offended person does not say what he was offended at, does not allow to atone for guilt (or is offended without an act, for the pleasure of seeing someone else's guilt and feeling his own power over the situation), does not give an opportunity to come to an agreement - you can talk about offense as a familiar way of destructive communication. If a person in an offense is available for contact (or clearly declares the need to be alone for some time), clearly indicates the connection of his offense with the act of another, and, in principle, is negotiable - accusing him of manipulative behavior, alas, will be manipulation. Since the denial of another person's right to their own feelings is, in my opinion, the most malicious manipulation of all possible.

Some people are wary of looking offended because they see showing resentment as showing weakness. Yes, by showing resentment - we are showing our vulnerability. And we are really vulnerable in everything that has to do with our expectations of other people, with our needs for others. But a strong person, adapted to the world, is distinguished not by the fact that he does not need anyone, but by the ability to recover and cope with disappointments. The idea of strength as absolute invulnerability is an illusory idea that makes a person, on the one hand, insensitive, and on the other, very fragile. The risk of opening up and facing rejection - for such a person will be tantamount to the collapse of the entire personality. A truly strong person is not afraid of both appearing weak and deceiving the expectation of his weakness, if the situation requires it.